I was having brunch with a friend at Walt Disney World. I know … don’t be jealous. It was a character breakfast and she had brought her adorable baby girl. We were curious to whether her little one would freak out when she saw the characters, because often kids do. It’s weird to see a mouse as tall as your dad. When Minnie came around, we waited and watched as she crouched down to be closer to the baby girl who gently placed her hand against Minnie’s nose. It was so sweet, I took a photo.
When I shared the photo with my friend, she said, “Good. You only see a little of her face. I can post that one online.”
I glad she was happy, but it was interesting to me to hear a young mom not want her kids to be seen online.
Have you seen the Max family vlogger documentary, An Update on Our Family?
This was my Mom’s Night Off viewing. I waited until all three episodes dropped before I started because I wanted to watch it all in one sitting.
An Update on Our Family is a short series about the Stauffers, however I think the intention was to probe the concept of using children for content. At least, that’s why I turned it on.
A few years ago I phased my children out of my online spaces. Not because of a specific incident but because I was reading bell hooks. She wrote a chapter in Feminism is for Everybody about raising feminist children where she implored for parents to start viewing children as beings with their own autonomy and not the property of their parents. Radical idea, right? Except we still have all this language regarding children as possessions – my child, my son, my daughter, etc. The my, his, hers, even ours are all possessive pronouns. Children are the responsibility of the parents, and had an incredible amount of power over them. It made me – as reading things often does – question how much autonomy my own children had when it came to my online spaces.
So I started a new IG, and put my existing IG on private. I gave them pseudonyms and tried not to be too personal about them. A few quips here and there because kids are hilarious. I tried not to be too revealing.
I like talking about my kids, but they didn’t ask to be public figures. They didn’t ask for their development to be placed on a public platform. And I didn’t feel like they were old enough to give consent.
However, many of my friends at the time were very interested in watching family vloggers on YouTube. When I was in grad school, most of my classmates were much younger than me. They may have missed those family dynamics now that they were living on their own. And it might have felt no different than watching any other reality television. And I understand the appeal of the parasocial relationship. I listen to podcasts and watch influencers and have to remind myself, “These are not my friends.” But I have kids so I didn’t feel compelled to watch another person parent children.
With the Stauffers, according to the documentary, this was a mom’s personal blog which progressively grew to the point of sponsorships and ultimately supporting their family with content. The doc probes many areas of the complications associated with this – using children for content, the parasocial relationship where viewers feel comfortable making demands, the drive for more clicks, and the choices people make in those situations.
But, what it didn’t spend enough time on, in my opinion, was the kids. It wasn’t until the end episode did one of the commentators remark how interesting it is going to be when the children of vloggers grow up and speak out about how they felt growing up with a camera in their face. There are several documentaries available on Max and Hulu about child actors – particularly in aftermath of Quiet on the Set. There is a desire to listen to child actors now that they are adults. Much like Quiet on the Set, the reason they are speaking out now is because no one was listening to them when they were children. They were commodities. And while the parents who speak in these documentaries will say how much their child wanted to act and be on these shows, the second the child is earning money, especially if it is making enough money to support the adults in the room, a shift occurs where their performance matters more than their needs.
Another thing that was touched on but not explored – and I don’t think this is specific to family vloggers – but a desire to constantly be pregnant and raise small children. One of the commentators called it an addiction. I would not use that word. I had relatively good pregnancies and liked being pregnant and taking care of my baby. And I can understand that now because when I had babies in my house my life operated on one simple guideline – keep the baby alive. Feed it, diaper it, rock it, make sure it doesn’t get sick and if it does, take it to the doctor. I was constantly thinking about my babies, reading about babies, looking for blogs about babies while also avoiding the mean mommie bloggers, etc. And once that baby reaches a certain age when they are walking and eating solid food and talking, a mom’s world opens up a little. And if you aren’t going back to work and want to be a stay at home mom, there can be a longing to have another baby because babies grow up.
The crux of the documentary, which was probably what lured me to the documentary was how this family adopted a little boy from China that they named Huxley. After the build up of the adoption, started phasing him out of the vlog and he eventually disappeared from it completely. This is where the viewers became concerned, which turned to demands, when then turned to accusations which led the cops to the house.
Which, is something else the documentary didn’t spend a lot of time on – the concept of rehoming. I think it’s possible that many people might not know about it. If an adopted child is not thriving in one home they can be rehomed to a different family. This is what happened to the child they named Huxley. And while I know this exists, mostly from TV documentaries, I’ve never known anyone to do it. My husband was adopted. My friends have adopted. Rehoming was not something anyone discussed. In the documentary there was one person explaining how they adopted two children and with the second one, they weren’t thriving and the family came to the difficult decision to rehome the child. While I appreciate a personal testimony, I would have liked to have heard more about it, particularly from a person who took in a child as a result of rehoming.
Which I guess is to say the short series was not long enough. And mostly because it’s not about a crime, but about ethics. And ethical issues are complicated. They can’t all be captured in three episodes.
While the public opinion was this family was using their children for content, particularly the choice to adopt a child that they knew would have special needs, to the point where they were run off all social media with virtual torches and pitchforks – even the commentators would not say absolutely that it was a money grab, just that it’s complicated.
I spend a lot of time watching documentaries about people who use social media and the internet for personal gain. Most of these individuals are committing some type of fraud: either tax fraud, catfishing scams, bitcoin embezzlement, or telling people you are a German heiress and consistently walking out before the bill arrives. Even a case like the vlogger whose identity was leaked in the Ashley Madison breach were perpetrating a fraud in that they were promoting strict Christian values while also holding a profile on a website specifically for married people looking to have an affair. Not all frauds are crimes.
And maybe one could say that about the Schaffers. They presented themselves as parents who had figured it all out. They presented themselves as ready to care for a special needs child, not understanding how much time it requires, how much it costs, or how much screaming comes with it. One might call that a fraud.
Online families are still big business. People like to share how great they are and as long as businesses are willing to offer sponsorship and YouTube is offering money, entrepreneurial families will share their lives online. And maybe us normies will keep our kids from appearing in their own personal reality show so a majority of children can grow up without the world watching them as they develop into humans.
XOXO,
B.
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